Cormac Jones

Cormac Jones is chief editor and featured author on the Symbolic World blog.

He also writes regularly on Substack at The Cormac Jones Journal, and has a website, cormacjones.com.

Related Content

What Counts as Symbolic Thinking?

How does one identify in symbolic terms a website about symbolic identity? The blog's new chief editor wonders aloud about the brand he is placed in charge of: what ground does it cover? what are its limits? where are its margins?

The Cosmic Chiasmus

Editor’s note: In this article, Cormac Jones uncovers a deep and important pattern. It has restructured the way I see narratives, and I can only compare the experience to the one I had when first reading The Language of Creation in 2018....

The Symbolic Structure of the Trisagion Prayers

More than a dozen times a day according to the Horologion (or “Book of Hours”) of the Eastern Rite, the Church prays the Trisagion prayers as part of its services. By Trisagion prayers I refer not just to the “thrice holy,” the prayer of the angels found first in Isaiah 6:3, but to the whole set of prayers that begins there and concludes with the Our Father. Each service starts with these prayers, and then returns to them at various points. They form a chiastic structure....

On the Symbolic Meaning of Domes, part four

In the fourth part of a five-part serialized article, the author looks at the shape of the onion dome dotting the land of the Rus' and contemplates its theological and cosmological meaning.

On the Symbolic Meaning of Domes, part three

In the central part of a five-part serialized article, the author contemplates the mystical patterns of the Hagia Sophia cathedral-turned-mosque in Istanbul, Turkey, once the crown jewel of the Eastern Roman Empire.

On the Symbolic Meaning of Domes, parts one and two

A five-part serialized article begins with introducing a modern Jewish temple that was turned into a university auditorium, before discussing its forebear in Rome, the Pantheon.

On Lot’s Life after Sodom and the Dangers of Symbolic Thinking

The Lord begins His commandments to Moses with “I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:2–3). Ergo the most foundational, most important distinction one should make in life is not between the one and the many, on the basis of which symbolic thinking is generated, nor between being and non-being, upon which the highest philosophy is based....

On the Symbolic Meaning of Domes, part five

They built the cathedral intending to have a dome, but they didn’t have functional plans for one. A public contest was held, and while competition was fierce, Filippo Brunelleschi beat out his old rival Lorenzo Ghiberti for the commission of building the dome.